Crisis in SUPP as branch chief sacked and others threaten to leave for new party

Sarawak United People's Party (SUPP) Sibu branch chief Datuk Seri Wong Soon Koh has been sacked from the party while three assemblymen who had purportedly left to join the newly formed Parti Tenaga Rakyat Sarawak (Teras) will be asked to explain their positions.

Its president Tan Sri Peter Chin (pic), who chaired an emergency meeting of its central executive committee (CEC) to discuss the latest crisis to hit the party, said in a statement that the expulsion of Wong was due to the Bawang Assan state assemblyman's declaration that he was joining Teras.

Chin said the CEC considered Wong's declaration “prejudicial to the interest of the party”.

Chin said since no resignation letters had been received from the three assemblymen – Datuk Dr Jerip Susil (Bengoh), Ranum Mina (Opar) and  Johnicol Rayong(Engkilili) – they would be writing to them“to seek clarifcation whether or not they had or are joining Teras”.

The trio were seen with Wong and former Sarawak Progressive Democratic Party (SPDP) members, including its former president Tan Sri William Mawan, at last week’s Friday press conference announcing the walkout from their respective parties.

The walkout by Wong and his faction was the culmination of a bitter four-year leadership feud they had with Chin that dates back to the party election at the December 2011 triennial delegates’ conference.

Wong, the state's Second Finance Minister, had accused the former Minister of Energy, Green Technology and Water of rigging the election.

Chin in the statement yesterday also repeated his demand that Wong resign immediately as state assemblyman for Bawang Assan and as state minister as he had “betrayed the party” which nominated him and the voters who had voted for him in the state election.

The CEC, which passed a resolution to strongly object any application by Teras to be admitted as a component party of the Barisan Nasional or “even as a BN Plus” member, also declared that the 19 state seats and seven parliamentary seats allocated to SUPP in the BN seat distribution were “not negotiable”.

The walkout of Wong and Mawan, two senior ministers in Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem's cabinet – Mawan is the Minister of Social Development – has since sparked a spate of walkouts by their respective supporters and even leaders from small parties.

Wong's branch secretary and four-term former MP for Lanang, Datuk Tiong Thai King, last Saturday quit SUPP to follow Wong.

In the branch's emergency meeting convened in Sibu, Tiong had declared that he longer had confidence in the party’s central leadership and claimed that there would be a mass walkout and resignations in the Sibu branch.

He said “the majority” of the branch's 20,000 members would soon quit the party.

One of the state's small family-run parties, the Sarawak Workers' Party (SWP), is still reeling after its deputy president and Pelagus assemblyman George Lagong abruptly left the party to join Teras.

It’s widely rumoured that its other assemblyman and vice president Wong Judat would follow suit.

Lagong won the seat as an independent and Wong won the seat as a BN/SPDP candidate in the 2011 election before joining SWP just before last year's general election.

Despite widespread rumours that Adenan would adopt his predecessor Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud's 1983 formula to accommodate Teras, Chin said he was confident that Teras would not be accepted into the BN.

“I don't think so,” Chin said when asked by reporters after the emergency meeting.

“If you don't have unanimous consent from every BN party, you cannot get in. We are confident that would not come about.”

Taib had come up with a BN 3+1 solution to accommodate Dayak leaders that had left the now-defunct Sarawak National Party (SNAP) after a power struggle with its Chinese president.

The three BN parties then were Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB), SUPP and SNAP.

While SPDP had already declared they would also block Teras's application, the second largest party in the state BN, Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), had stated that it was “unsympathetic towards Teras's bid for BN membership”.

PRS is unhappy with the presence of Lagong, who triumphed over its candidate in the 2011 election.